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There's a storm brewing over a book which was featured in a US sci-fi magazine, which has been criticised since the book revolves around the idea of a ruling race of dark-skinned people and an under-class of fair-skinned people, and HILARIOUS RESULTS that ensue. It sounds pretty awful and heavy handed, but from looking at it it doesn't seem that far off Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses, which was hailed as a wildly brilliant study of racism.

Shouldn't sci-fi be free to explore these ideas? Or do too many writers in the genre abuse it to spread their nefarious ideas (thinking about how Starship Troopers was written/read as a white power text). Should that matter if the art itself is any good? I'm just kicking round ideas.

No doubt all the characters from Westeros are pretty racist towards those from Essos and consider themselves the height of civilization.

All the while committing incest, rape, fratricide, regicide, more general murder, unleashing wars in which thousands will die for their own gratification, burning people alive, drowning people. Meanwhile the people in Essos are just chilling out having a great old time

ive just watched the tv series but i mean the characterization of anyone outside of westeros as mystical bloodthirsty savage hordes who just make merry and bang each other while all the feuding noble white people are struggling w/ existential issues and the trying to seize power is quite racist imho

i watched this show because so many people were talking about it and i was interested to know what it was like
its just someone gave me the impression there were interesting political dimensions to it which i found a bit misleading
lotta boobs tho its tru

its about a planet where people arent really either gender and its cool
i can appreciate that feminists probably would dig this book and say it is but im not that comfortable w/ this kind being called feminist idk

All the seizing of power is done by the 'western' people, isn't it? They're the ones squabbling over a crown. What LLB says is right, in that it looks more like the 'western' people are the savage idiots.

You could argue there aren't a great deal of non-white people represented but I'd guess that would probably be true of England during the War of the Roses too.

i guess the point is that the people from westeros are emotionally complex and yknow like real people dealing with real issues and while they do bad things its usually after a lot of soul searching or because theyre doing what they have to in difficult times

whereas anyone else is driven either by desires which they dont seem to control or some fairly halfbaked racial stereotypes

I thought you were saying the seizing power stuff specifically was racist.

In answer, yes and no.

It's racist in that there are no non-Westerosi characters given any key roles, which is also why only white characters get to actually have the emotional complexity and soul searching you're talking about.

I've only seen 15/20 eps (read all the books) so it's pretty much been Dothraki 'savages' I've seen and they are fairly clichéd. Daenerys's arc is definitely racist in its colonialism/bringing order the the savages sort of feel, which I guess is what you're driving at.

The whole show is full of clichés and it's probably more sexist than it is racist - moreso than the books thanks to 'sexposition'.

the daenerys thing is kind of odd cuz she starts off as the medieval bride who is just a tool of the male characters around her but then w/ the dragons it turns into this thing about fears of femininity and childbirth idk i always feel pretty sorry for her

about the power struggles what i meant was that broadly speaking its only the westeros characters who do that in a very developed way - cuz thats a big part of what you see them doing - and when you contrast that against how the dothraki are characterized - as mostly marauding murderous hordes - theres a pretty heavy vibe of civilised vs uncivilised society to it all but yah thats just another aspect of what i was talking about

id guess that even the stuff about the wall and whatever to the north reinforces the idea of the lurking terror beyond the borders of the homeland but who knows how thatll turn out

Obviously I guess Orientalism has been critiqued plenty in the past few years, but there's been east/west oppositions set up since the Ancient Greeks, based on the same ideas (the West is civilised and rational, the east is decadent and mystical) etc etc

Because the different alien races sort of mirror the negative stereotypes of different nationalities/races? But then the whole central thing of Star Trek is about seeking out and befriending new life and civilisations... which I guess is a bit Conquistador of them...

I can tell you that you just have to let it roll right off your back. When Luftwaffe Fuck Robots From Mississippi came out I got booed on the street for its clumsy tackling of several controversial issues - Nazism, cyberotic sex, segregation in the US south - but who's burning that book now? Hardly anyone, that's who

From what I've read on Wikipedia the books are all about some proper Nazi esque supremacy shit. Like imagine the bits in the film about trampling on bugs in the fake news casts and imagine that was serious

The director's commentary on the DVD is hilarious, it's just Verhoven ranting really overtly about how it's an attack on US politics etc (while the screenwriter kind of tries to distance himself and tone it down) and then interrupting himself to point out EVERY SINGLE special effects shot and whether it was a model, greenscreen, CGI etc :D

Kirk - yeah let's do what we fucking like
Picard - Welcome to this week's ADVENTURE IN PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS!
Sisko - Let's get bad ass then get a bit emo and navel gazing
Janeway - let's all sit around and talk about our feelings